Este artículo presenta a Weber y Habermas como los umbrales o polos de una modernidad que tiene al progreso como horizonte teórico-práctico. El diagnóstico weberiano sobre la modernidad y su proceso de desencantamiento del mundo y la injustificada reducción de la actividad racional a una actividad utilitario-estratégica desprovista de su carácter veritativo y de su orientación valórica, Habermas la utiliza para justificar su propuesta teórico-crítica respecto a la modernidad y la "paradoja de la racionalización", distinguiendo "sistema" y "mundo vital". Aquí (...) "desencantamiento del mundo" y "consenso del proyecto de lamodernidad", se encuentranThis article presents Weber and Habermas like the thresholds or poles of a modernity that has to the progress as theoretical- practical horizon. The diagnosis weberiano on the modernity and his process of disenchantment of the world and the unjustified reduction of the rational activity to a utilitarian-strategic activity devoid of his character of truth, Habermas uses to justify his theoretical-critical offerwith regard to themodernity and the "paradox of the rationalization", distinguishing "system" and "vital world". Here "disenchantment of the world" and "consensus of the project of the modernity", they are. (shrink)

This chapter proposes a dialectical approach to legal interpretation, consisting of three dimensions: a formalization of the canons of interpretation in terms of argumentation schemes; a dialectical classification of interpretive schemes; and a logical and computational model for comparing the arguments pro and contra an interpretation. The traditional interpretive maxims or canons used in both common and civil law are translated into defeasible patterns of arguments, which can be evaluated through sets of corresponding critical questions. These interpretive argumentation schemes are (...) classified in general categories and a distinction is drawn between schemes supporting and rebutting an interpretation. This framework allows conceiving statutory interpretation as a dialectical procedure consisting in weighing arguments pro and contra an interpretation. This procedure is formalized and represented computationally through tools from formal argumentation systems. (shrink)

This title presents a comprehensive guide to interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) which is an increasingly popular approach to qualitative inquiry taught to undergraduate and postgraduate students today.

This article probes the usefulness of selected theories from Cognitive Linguistics in the context of statutory interpretation. The presumption of legal language is a well-established rule of statutory construction in Polish legal practice that comes from the internationally recognised theory by Jerzy Wróblewski. It rests on a controversial assumption that there are different levels of generality in legal language (i.e. the language of statutes) and a single term may be given different meanings depending on the level of generality that is (...) referred to. The authors use the notion of basic level categorisation from the cognitive theory of prototypes to explain this mechanism. Legal concepts, not unlike ordinary concepts, form hierarchical taxonomies. A single term may denote concepts that are situated at different levels in different conceptual taxonomies. In the absence of special circumstances, a legal term should be given the meaning that resides at a higher level of categorisation in the respective legal taxonomy. This way, the presumption of legal language is found to be justified on both linguistic and psychological grounds. (shrink)

This paper proposes a theoretical approach to discuss the relations among reality, chemists’ interactions with it, and the resulting interpretation and representation of the acquired scientific knowledge. Taking into account that such relations are of semiotic nature, this paper aims at discussing in the light of Peirce’s theory of signs different descriptions of chemical activity and chemical education proposed by Alex Johnstone and elaborated by other science educators. In order to discuss the contributions and limitations of the proposed theoretical framework, (...) and considering its potential interest for chemical education, an example on the communication strategies for the content ‘vapour pressure’ found in twentieth-century general chemistry university textbooks is also presented. (shrink)

Hermeneutics has had a pervasive influence on contemporary philosophy, social and cultural theory, literary criticism, and aesthetics. In this book one of Europe's foremost contemporary philosophers provides hermeneutics with a fresh relevance and a substantive account of its philosophical meaning for science, ethics, religion, and art. Vattimo argues for a reading of hermeneutics that radicalises it according to what the author calls its 'nihilistic vocation', a term referring to the interpretive character of truth and taken from Nietzsche's statement that there (...) are, in the modern period, no facts, only interpretations. Modernity, for Vattimo, is conceived as the advent of nihilism, and the central question of the book is to ask what it means to take this nihilistic vocation seriously. This involves not simply accepting the current status of hermeneutics, but evaluating why it appears when, and where, it does. (shrink)

In this new book, Alessandra Tanesini demonstrates that feminist thought has a lot to offer to the study of Wittgenstein's philosophical work, and that -at the same time-that work can inspire feminist reflection in new directions. In Wittgenstein, Tanesini offers a highly original interpretation of several themes in Wittgenstein's philosophy. She argues that when we look at his work through feminist eyes we discover that he is not primarily concerned with providing solutions to technical problems in the philosophy of mind, (...) mathematics, and language. Instead, his remarks on these topics are intended to offer insights about human finitude, the loneliness of the modern autonomous self, and our relations to other human beings. Thus, the modern conception of the individual emerges as the critical target of Wittgenstein's philosophical work, both early and late. This conception has also been one of the dominant concerns of contemporary feminist philosophy. In this book, Wittgenstein's insights are deployed to further feminist debates on issues such as identity, difference, the masculine character of the modern self. (shrink)

The Philosophy of Psychiatry is a unique area of research because the nature of the subject matter leads to quite distinct methodological issues. Naturalism, Interpretation, and Mental Disorder is an original new work focusing on the challenges we face when trying to interpret and understand mental illness. The book integrates a hermeneutical perspective, and shows how such an approach can reveal important facts about historical sources in psychiatry and the nature of dialogue in the therapeutic encounter. In addition, the book (...) demonstrates how such an approach can be valuable for understanding the concept of mental disorder itself. Naturalism, Interpretation, and Mental Disorder brings fresh thinking to the philosophy of psychiatry, and will be of interest to students and scholars in the fields of Mental Health and Philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Objects of Legal Interpretation Utterance Model of Legal Interpretation How the Law Is Different from Art Digression: Indeterminacy in Art and the Law Aims of Legal Interpretation and Conceptions of the Law Precedent and Judicial Authority Considerations of Prudence, Morality, and Justice: Judicial Liberty A Constructivist Conception of Legal Interpretation An Alternative View: Dworkin's Constructivism The Relevance of Intention: Con and Pro Conclusion Notes.

The skeptical solution is based on two assumptions — the rejection of semantic facts and the denial of semantic nihilism. On the basis of the non-factualist interpretation of this solution, these two assumptions are reconciled by stating that meaning ascriptions possess non-descriptive function. Nonetheless, Alexander Miller argues that this position is self-refuting since, as despite its non-descriptivism, by rejecting any kind of semantic facts, it inevitably leads to semantic nihilism. In this text, I demonstrate that Miller’s argument is not sound. (...) I argue that a coherent non-factualist way of formulating the conditions of correct use of meaning ascriptions may be performed by rejecting the closure principle of assertibility of meaning ascriptions. On this basis, I demonstrate that argument formulated against non-factualist interpretation by Miller may be refuted. What is more, I argue that rejection of the closure principle should be regarded as the central aspect of Kripke’s skeptical solution. (shrink)

This book aims to show the many resources at our disposal for grappling with the Holocaust as the darkest occurrence of the twentieth century. These wide-ranging studies on philosophy, history, and literature address the way the Holocaust had led to the reconceptualization of the humanities. The scholarly approaches of Pierre Klossowski, Georges Bataille, and Maurice Blanchot are examined critically, and the volume explores such poignant topics as violence, evil, and monuments.

Feminist scholars reacted to news of Beauvoir's death in 1986 by initiating a reevaluation of her life's work, a task encouraged by Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir, her adopted daughter, who edited for posthumous publication many of Beauvoir's personal notebooks and letters to Sartre. Some of the most exciting new interpretations of Beauvoir's philosophy that have resulted are brought together here for the first time; many of them, indeed, were written expressly for this first volume of essays on Beauvoir's philosophy (...) written since her death. (shrink)

This chapter contains section titled: Actual Intentionalism Criticisms of Actual Intentionalism What Do we Aim At When We Interpret a Work? The Aims of Interpretation and the Value of Art Critical Monism and Critical Pluralism Theories of Work Meaning Hypothetical Intentionalism Versus the Unified View Notes.

This chapter contains section titled: The Intentional Domain Four Questions Special Aims Utterances Semantics and Pragmatics Extending the Utterance Model When Do We Interpret? Conceptions of Interpretation Monism and Pluralism Notes.

We present evidence that preschool children oftentimes understand disjunctive sentences as if they were conjunctive. The result holds for matrix disjunctions as well as disjunctions embedded under every. At the same time, there is evidence in the literature that children understand or as inclusive disjunction in downward-entailing contexts. We propose to explain this seemingly conflicting pattern of results by assuming that the child knows the inclusive disjunction semantics of or, and that the conjunctive inference is a scalar implicature. We make (...) two assumptions about implicature computation in the child: that children access only a proper subset of the adult alternatives, and that children possess the adult capacity to strengthen sentences with implicatures. As a consequence, children are expected to sometimes not compute any implicatures at all, but in other cases they are expected to compute an implicature that is different from the adult implicature. We argue that the child’s conjunctive strengthening of disjunctive sentences realizes the latter possibility: the adult infers that the conjunction is false but the child infers that the conjunction is true. This behaviour is predicted when our assumptions about child development are coupled with the assumption that a covert exhaustive operator is responsible for strengthening in both the child and the adult. Specifically, children’s conjunctive strengthening is predicted to follow from the same mechanism used by adults to compute conjunctive free choice implicatures in response to disjunctive permission sentences. We furthermore argue that this parallel between the child and the adult extends to disambiguation preferences. In particular, we present evidence that children prefer to strengthen disjunctions to conjunctions, in matrix and embedded positions ; this result mirrors previous findings that adults prefer to compute free choice, at the root and under every. We propose a disambiguation strategy that explains the preference for conjunctive strengthening – by both the child and the adult – even though there is no general preference for exhaustification. Specifically, we propose that the preference for a conjunctive strengthening follows from a pragmatic preference for a complete answer to the Question Under Discussion. (shrink)